And so it was with the new breakfast food. No one would have
eaten Filboid Studge as a pleasure, but the grim austerity of its
advertisement drove housewives in shoals to the grocers' shops to
clamour for an immediate supply. In small kitchens solemn pig-
tailed daughters helped depressed mothers to perform the primitive
ritual of its preparation. On the breakfast-tables of cheerless
parlours it was partaken of in silence. Once the womenfolk
discovered that it was thoroughly unpalatable, their zeal in
forcing it on their households knew no bounds. "You haven't eaten
your Filboid Studge!" would be screamed at the appetiteless clerk
as he hurried weariedly from the breakfast-table, and his evening
meal would be prefaced by a warmed-up mess which would be
explained as "your Filboid Studge that you didn't eat this
morning." Those strange fanatics who ostentatiously mortify
themselves, inwardly and outwardly, with health biscuits and
health garments, battened aggressively on the new food. Earnest
spectacled young then devoured it on the steps of the National
Liberal Club. A bishop who did not believe in a future state
preached against the poster, and a peer's daughter died from
eating too much of the compound.
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